land art

Art movement that emerged in 1960s (Earthwork exhibition, 1968, Dwan Gallery, New York) in U.S. Land art is all about interference in the landscape, transforming its part, or allowing natural processes (erosion, weathering) to create the action of an artistic object.

– created in nature, using natural materials (soil, rock, organic, water, logs, leaves) with introduced (concrete, metal, asphalt)
– sculptures are not placed in the landscape, rather, the landscape is the means of their creation
– very various, different in scale, and nature of action
– some requiring radical earthworks (excavations, mounds, ditches)
– work presented in the traditional art institutions(galleries, museums) in the form of photographic documentation, films, sketches, implementing measures, maps
– combines trends and phenomena occurring in the artistic world of the ’60s,such as moving the pressure of the final result of the work into the process of its creation, dematerialization of art (conceptualism), performance and body art.

Wrapped Coast
“100 workers and 11 volunteers devoted 17,000 work hours to the project. Christo wrapped Two-and-a-half kilometres of coast and Cliffs up to 26 metres high. The project required 9,5600 m2 of synthetic fabric and 56 km of rope and was the largest single artwork ever made at this time. The artwork was larger than Mount Rushmore, and visitors took an hour to walk from one end of the work to the other. After initial resistance from the authorities and the public, reactions were largely positive, and had an enormous impact on art in Australia.”

Surrounded Islands

“Christo and Jeanne-Claude planned a project based on Jeanne-Claude’s idea to surround eleven islands in Miami’s Biscayne Bay with 603,850 m2 of pink polypropylene floating fabric. It was completed on 4 May 1983 with the aid of 430 workers and could be admired for two weeks.
(..)For 2 weeks Surrounded Islands spreading over 11.3 kilometers (7.0 mi) was seen, approached and enjoyed by the public, from the causeways, the land, the water and the air. The luminous pink color of the shiny fabric was in harmony with the tropical vegetation of the uninhabited verdant island, the light of the Miami sky and the colors of the shallow waters of Biscayne Bay.
(…) The marine and land crews picked up debris from the eleven islands, putting refuse in bags and carting it away after they had removed some forty tons of varied garbage: refrigerator doors, tires,kitchen sinks, mattresses and an abandoned boat.
(…)From November 1982 until April 1983, 6,500,000 square feet (600,000 m2) of woven polypropylene fabric were sewn at the rented Hialeah factory, into 79 different patterns to follow the contours of the 11 islands. A flotation strip was sewn in each seam. At the Opa Locka Blimp Hangar, the sewn sections were accordion folded to ease the unfurling on the water.
The outer edge of the floating fabric was attached to a 30.5 centimeter (12 inch) diameter octagonal boom, in sections, of the same color as the fabric. The boom was connected to the radial anchor lines which extended from the anchors at the island to the 610 specially made anchors, spaced at 15.3 meter (50 ft) intervals, 76 meters (250 ft) beyond the perimeter of each island, driven into the limestone at the bottom of the Bay. Earth anchors were driven into the land, near the foot of the trees, to secure the inland edge of the fabric, covering the surface of the beach and disappearing under the vegetation.
The floating rafts of fabric and booms, varying from 3.7 to 6.7 meters (12 to 22 feet) in width and from 122 to 183 meters (400 to 600 feet) in length were towed through the Bay to each island. There were 11 islands, but on two occasions, two islands were surrounded together as one configuration.
(…)Surrounded Islands was a work of art which underlined the various elements and ways in which the people of Miami live, between land and water.”
source: wikipedia